Esther C Kane

Okay, so I’m noticing a few issues lately when it comes to website design and I thought it was worth addressing.  Now, I want to first and foremost let you know that I AM NOT a web designer.  My focus, when it comes to websites, is to get them to function properly for the search engines and for the consumers.  I want the search engines to find the sites and I want the consumers to buy from the site.  Whatever needs to be done to achieve those goals, that is what I will do.  When it comes to the artistic, aesthetics of a website, I am NOT the one to ask!

Not A Designer – But A Consumer

So, with that being said, although I am not a web designer I am a consumer. I purchase almost everything online. From groceries to furniture and everything in between, it’s mostly all purchased online. So, I do visit many websites and I shop from just a few so my comments here are from the customer perspective.

Okay, now that I’ve laid down the groundwork here, let me explain what I’ve been noticing.

It seems to me that the older the website owner is, the more “packed” the website pages are. Obviously not everyone will be able to make that assumption but I can see this trend in my own client base and of course I can see some website owners on their own websites.

Anyway, what I mean by “packed” is that there is so much information or graphics or stuff on a website page that it makes it difficult not only to decipher what the page is about but it makes it difficult to find more information. As a consumer, I am not going to read the information on a website page (I’m being brutally honest here). I will read the headlines and if I’m making a large purchase I will read reviews on other websites (and then come back to make the purchase) but I will not read every word of every sentence on the page. Especially of those words are difficult to read if they are overlapping a graphic or are embedded in some kind of flash animation or if the text colour is too light or neon pink!

For the most part, the words are there for the search engines. After all, in order to get the customer to your website in the first place you need them to find you on the search engines.

But It Looks Great – I Know

Yeah, I know, the beautiful graphics, photos, visual appeal of the website is great. The neon pink text matches the logo and it just looks wonderful. I know. BUT – the point of your business website is to bring in business and to convert those visitors to clients. You can go as wild as you want on aesthetics on personal websites, wedding websites, baby websites, etc. But on business websites, the focus is business.

It’s Not Personal – It’s Just Business

My intention here is not to offend anyone, but if beauty is in the eye of the beholder then business is in the statistics. What I mean is that if the design is affecting the sale, the statistics on the website pages will show that.

I am not really sure why I see this mostly in older clients. If anyone has any theories please let me know but it’s an observation that just hit me today. Interesting.

A few months ago I got a phone call from someone who found the Eckweb website on the Internet and she wanted information about our SEO services. In the conversation she asked me about link building. I said well these days, link building is really all about social media. The idea is to get people to talk about you and your services or products. You don’t just go out and get links anymore, we haven’t really done that for a few years now.

Her response was, “Oh really, hmmmm.”

I never heard from her again. She didn’t believe me and she probably thought I was telling her a story but I was telling her the absolute truth and hopefully, whatever SEO firm she signed up with, they told her the truth as well.

Truth be told, I get this quite a bit.  Not just from small businesses calling in but also from existing clients.

Today’s Forbes Article

So, today I see an article on my reading list about this very subject. And to quote this article…

“The linking that supports your organic search engine results must itself be obtained organically through social sharing, guest blogging and similar tactics.”

It made me feel better that at least there are others out there who do follow the same philosophy that we do here at Eckweb.  It’s easy to get lost ini all of this with so many changes happening almost daily.

How To Tackle Incoming Links Today?

In the Forbes article the writer interviewed Ken O’Donnell from KO Websites and I love what Ken said…

“…there has to be a real business reason for the sites linking to yours to be doing so. In a sense, the SEO challenge has been simplified dramatically: Create interesting, consumer-focused, relevant and useful content for your site. Create a lot of it, and refresh it constantly, and people like you, or with whom you do business, will want to link to it.”

The article went on to list a series of steps which outline what is necessary for creating and managing incoming links.  (A list we will be going over for our clients and if we’re missing anything – we will be incorporating it.)  But take a look for yourself.  It’s a great read if you’re interested in your website’s Internet marketing.

On another note, these steps should give you an idea of how truly complicated SEO marketing has become.  And also how important social media and content building truly are these days.  Don’t neglect them.  Your business from the Internet will suffer due to that neglect.

I’m currently working on a proposal for someone, a podiatrist in the New York area and I just received his response to the proposal.  His comment was that the competitors that I listed for him were not really his competitors, he then gave me 2 other podiatry offices that he considered to be his competition.  This happens so often and it’s one of the most common questions that I get.

So, in case you’re not quite understanding what Internet Competition is let me explain.

1) The competitor in your specific geography is NOT necessarily your Internet competitor.  Their building may be near yours, but on the Internet their website may be 20 pages away from yours.

2) When you do a search on Google, your browser should be automatically set up to search within your local area.  So, if you’re in San Francisco and you type in “podiatrist” then you’re supposed to get local results of podiatrists.  Not a list of podiatrists in Boston or Seattle.

3) You can change the local search on Google like this…

a) Go to Google and in the search box type in your query.
b) In the search results, near the top of the page you’ll see this…

c) Click on the button “Search tools” and you can type in a location or the zip code.  When you’re done typing that in click the “Set” button and you’ll see your search results change.

4) Now, I do warn you that this is not a perfect tool but it’s quite good at giving you an idea of the local competitors.  You’re seeing what visitors in that location are seeing.

Why Is Knowing Your Internet Competitors Important?

Because in general, Internet visitors will type in the service or product and not the location.  So, someone in Elmhurst NY will type in “podiatrist” or “local podiatrist” vs. “podiatrist in Elmhurst NY”.  The idea is to capture as many Internet visitors as possible and you want your website to do that.

Of course, a local website will absolutely market the local keyword phrases. But you don’t want local phrases to be the ONLY phrases that you target. Your website is not a flyer that you distribute at local stores. It’s meant to cast a wider net and bring in more traffic than local marketing. You’re paying the SEO webmaster so why not get the most that you can from those payments?